Jenny Powers
By Jenny Powers
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The Schmooze Meet The Rockettes Who Light Hanukkah Menorahs Backstage
While the audience gets settled into their seats for the evening performances of this week’s Radio City Music Hall Christmas Spectacular — tucked behind the curtain, several cast- and crew-members recite Hanukkah prayers in unison and light a menorah to celebrate the holiday. Five minutes before the curtain goes up, this thirty-year tradition is led…
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Life Celebrating The High Holidays — While Deployed In Afghanistan
Children’s grape juice boxes. Swedish gummy fish. Honey sticks. Dried apples. Pomegranate candies. A kazoo. You Tube and WhatsApp. And relying on the sun’s rays to heat up a holiday meal wrapped in tin foil. Sometimes celebrating Rosh Hashanah can take on MacGyver-like proportions for American Jewish servicemen and women on military deployment. While the…
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Life He Survived Holocaust And Had A Bar Mitzvah. Now His Grandson Returns To Bimah In Same Polish Synagogue
Philip Epstein has stood in the same exact spot on two separate occasions, 72 years apart. The first time was in 1946 when Epstein, a child Holocaust survivor, was called to the bimah to become a bar mitzvah at the Reicher Synagogue in Lodz, Poland. He was only eleven at the time, and according to…
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Life Forgetting A Child In A Car Can Have Deadly Consequences. A New Israeli Device Promises to Prevent It.
Every nine days a child in the United States dies from vehicular heat stroke. Most parents think it can’t happen to them, and yet statistics reveal that 55% of the time tragedy strikes, it is the child’s parent that unknowingly left them inside the vehicle, according to KidsandCars.org. Adam Tannenbaum, a technology strategist and father…
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Life Meet The Sheitel Fairy Godmother, Providing Wigs To Needy Orthodox Women
Staci Segal is on a mission to get sheitels, the wigs worn by married Orthodox women, into the hands and onto the heads of those that do not have the means to afford them. According to Segal, the starting cost for a decent sheitel made of human hair, the preferred material starts at $500 and…
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The Schmooze A Boy Living In A Juvenile Facility Dreamt Of A Bar Mitzvah. A Group Of Retirees Made It Happen.
Joshua had little hopes of having a bar mitzvah. After all, bar mitzvahs aren’t exactly a common event at the Dobbs Ferry juvenile facility for youth at risk. Until a group of Jewish retirees stepped in. It all began with a phone call between two strangers. Rabbi Benjy Silverman of Chabad of Rivertowns vividly recalls…
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Life She Discovered What The Homeless Lack Most: Socks.
Socks are the “single most-needed article of clothing in homeless shelters” — and remain the least-donated items, according to Adina Lichtman, the twenty-five year old founder of Knock, Knock Give a Sock (KKGS), the non-profit dedicated to reducing the stigma of homelessness. Lichtman, a New Jersey native, says that while nine out of ten people…
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Life Meet The World’s Only Hasidic Bagpipe Player
Not every bagpipe-playing altar boy considering joining the priesthood grows up to be a Hasidic Jew — but Ian Sherman did. Ian, known today in many circles by his Hebrew name Ephraim Eliyahu, was born to a Scottish Catholic mother and an Eastern European Jewish father, and was raised in Goshen, New York. Brought up…
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